The Lavender House

By Frank Hajek

He was known as the Ghost of Wall Street. A shadowy investor that left the market without a biography, and millions of dollars made with astounding trades. Where he went, where he is now no one seems to know, but Louis Stein is hellbent to find out and with no chronicle to follow he will pull many underground strings that most men know nothing about. From the jungles of Bolivia to the manicured mansions of Washington there was a connection uncharted and a story of exceptional size that needed telling. Meet Adrian Knox, his woman Sophie and the wonders only extreme wealth and a drastic quest for anonymity might construct. And it’s all about to change...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frank Hajek
• Release date: Feb 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463806999

Frank Hajek

AUTHOR Frank Hajek spent his career working within the design and advertising communities, owning an advertising agency for more than thirty years. He has written throughout his life for print and television, including screenplays. Presently he lives and works in the Philippine Islands.

Book preview

The Man's House

The house lay somewhere near the middle of a twelve thousand acre lavender farm growing happily in the South of France. It's believed to be a few dozen miles from the southern coast. That's as close as I can place it because the exact location is really unknown. I understand that we should be able to locate such a structure easily with all the satellite imagery now available, but it remains a mystery for reasons you will soon comprehend.

Such a house could only be the property of a singular man, of great resources, who was driven by an immense need for privacy. The reasons he might argue were simple and innocent, but for most of his detractors, they believed there had to be something criminal, something evil in such an elaborate castle of isolation. This too you will come to understand when the time is right.

The structure was a marvel of technology. Many of its features were based in modern construction techniques that would have been impossible fifty years earlier. Even the description presented here is a matter of conjecture, and the details remain a conglomeration of many reports extracted from workers and tradesmen brought in to complete the edifice. Whoever designed and managed the project remains silent. Now, to the structure...

Imagine a disk some seventy feet across shaped like the classic spacecraft and fully thirty feet high at its center. Its outer walls are three feet thick, massively reinforced with a new form of metal seven times stronger than ordinary steel; the uniting concrete being a proprietary formulation having strength and flexibility far beyond anything known to the common mason, or even to the high rise specialists of the trade.

Now, set this structure forty feet above the surrounding landscape supported by a circular column thirty feet in diameter. The pillar, being a one hundred foot tube fabricated from the same steel and concrete used above, seamlessly joins the disk creating a mushroom anchored deep into a well, one hundred twenty feet across and forty feet deep. This well formed a moat-like crater beneath the house discouraging any adventurers from trying to climb to the residence. The column continued another thirty feet into the hard earth anchoring the structure, while an internal pump installed in its core provided a deep water supply. Specially laid electrical connections were brought in from seven miles away completing the necessary services for the dwelling. All this would be spectacular enough but it was only the beginning of the wonders this abode bestowed.

Access to the house was provided by a section of the lower fortification that dropped down, clamshell style, and unfolded a very intricate stairway that reached out to a landing on the rim of the crater. Its chrome steel construction was light, yet strong, and the mechanism complex and elaborate. It was activated by a remote signal using a device unique to the structure that combined both laser and infrared digital communication to signal its control system. Having entered the home the owner could de-activate the entire operating system with a simple circuit breaker. Additionally the clamshell door, when closed, was locked in place with an eight bolt Diebold apparatus that made breaking into the house impossible. There are more wonders to come...

The dwelling's water was brought into the lower portion of the house (for it was divided into two levels) via a conduit piped up from the well below. It was first filtered, then treated and stored in one of the six cast sections within the lower level. The wedge shaped areas were not equal but sized according to need and all constructed of the same steel and concrete method used on the exterior walls. Each section was part of the continuous concrete pour that created the entire structure over a six-day period. When the mortar cured all these lower holding areas were coated in tar and then lined with a half-inch thick polymer barrier making them watertight. Additionally, the electrical, storage and computer systems sections were fitted with air venting networks that eliminated humidity. These were piped through ducts located at the center conduit and vented to the exterior through fortified portals around the outer rim of the structure.

The upper areas of the dwelling were sheathed in solar panels of a unique construction. Flexible, yet tough they were capable of providing all the electrical power required to run the home and its equipment, in the event of a power supply interruption. The water tank held over twelve hundred gallons of fresh, purified water providing a sixty day supply if the well source were shut down; and the waste disposal facility enabled a space station recycling apparatus that could reclaim enough water to extend that period to four months. In short, the house was self sufficient and capable of withstanding a long siege.

Castle defense was another well thought out objective. If for any reason the home were brought under attack, built in defensive measures provided a hefty response. Most of the details are only speculation, but it was thought the building housed a significant number of automated weapons commanded by the principal computer system and controlled using both visual and infrared sensors to delineate whichever targets were deemed threatening. This system could be switched on by the resident, if needed, or might automatically engage when the building was under assault. Again, the details are based on hearsay gathered from those few workers who would speak of it but no conclusive proof had ever been offered and certainly no inspection of the premises ever carried out.

At its very top the home had been fitted with an escape. The vehicle had been created, and perfected by a team of six graduates from MIT, Oxford, Harvard, Cornell and Vassar. All of them graduating Summa Cum Laude. The Lavender Home's owner had given each a $1,000,000 payment, covered all expenses for working space, materials and costs and in exchange required each to remain silent about the project as his vehicle took shape. By agreement, they could not promote, sell or reproduce any other copies of their final design for four years. After that period they would be free to do as they desired, and looked to make a fortune from the design. His pitch had been that they could have a four-year vacation while young and full of energy, work on anything else if they liked and later reap huge rewards for their work. The design was so far beyond anything else in the industry that they knew it would still be a winner in four years. His ironclad rule was secrecy for the agreed period. The result was stunning.

Eight pods circle a two-seat cockpit, each housing two electric motors with 16-inch props at top and bottom rotating in counter directions. This provides motion stability. The bottom and sides of the passenger capsule, while constructed of ultra light carbon fiber and sheathed with a ballistic honeycomb capable of withstanding a .50 caliber round, remained light and strong. The upper canopy is made of the same material used in the Bell AH-1 Cobra, and in fact was produced by the same manufacturer. Its protective specs are similar to those of the passenger shell.

The on board computer system is designed to fly the aircraft pilot free, and in fact the owner had it pre-programmed to automatically commute to a designated location some 130 kilometers north, north-west of the house. Two JATO solid propellant rocket engines, one on each side of the capsule, would fire when the launch button was pressed. A protective dome above the vehicle would blast clear of the launch pad punching a hole in the digital 'cloak', then the rockets would fire much like an ejector seat in a jet aircraft. The rockets would carry the craft up to about 2000 feet, at which point the computer would take over, flying the vehicle off at 200 kilometers per hour or better. Much thinking had gone into the programming of the autopilot, as their patron wanted the craft to be able to get him to safety, even if he was hurt or incapacitated.

So many ways to freedom.

The house had a final protection unimaginable just a few years earlier. The same design team used to create the escape vehicle 'aero taxi' suggested it when they began to work with the Israeli semi conductor chips the owner had secured for them through a personal connection. The chips, used for incredibly advanced defense systems protecting Jerusalem, were super conductors of such advanced architecture that they were years beyond anything being produced by Intel. The team marveled at their intricacy, but more were stunned with their computational capability. The result was the incredible 'cloak'.

Imagine a cloth made of the thinnest clear monofilament line as light as cheesecloth and transparent. Now place a microscopic petal structure at each junction, where the threads cross. The petal consists of six micro pixel displays with a tiny micro camera at its center much like the stigma in a real flower. The entire array being less than a centimeter in diameter these tiny units are combined to create a blanket, interconnected and coordinated by two massive workstation computers located within the house. This was all made possible by the enormous power of those special Israeli super conductors, while a second pair of workstations acted as a backup forestalling any interruption to the system. The purpose was brilliantly simple.

At any point on the exterior of the house the 'cloak' had a micro camera pointing directly out at whatever was there. Ground, flowers, trees, clouds; whatever was there was being video captured. Now, at a point directly 180º from that camera, essentially the opposite side of the structure, the pixel displays there would exhibit what that camera was seeing, in real time and continuously. Multiply that by over one million camera points and their display counterparts at 180º position and you had... invisibility. When the system was operating you could view the building from any angle and all you might see was the view from the exact opposite side of the structure. Look up and you would see clouds or an aircraft flying by, look west and you would see the windbreak tree line on that side of the home, look down as from an aircraft and you would see the earth below or the lavender flowers growing in the fields there. It was the realization of an age-old dream and it worked, all made possible by such immense computational power.

And so, the dream home of a very wealthy recluse stood in a field of lavender, somewhere in France, invisible, nearly impenetrable and unknown. Questions must be asked... why? What could go wrong? And there in resides our story.

CHAPTER TWO

And Who Might Live Here?

He was known as Adrian Knox. He stood at five foot nine and a half inches and would always emphasize that half-inch, probably driven by some Freudian inadequacy buried deep within his foundations. In truth Knox was an average man living out an exceptional life. He was never the brightest in his class, never the fastest, never the toughest and certainly not the largest. No, he was just riding the crest of a wave caught at the proper time followed by uncommon luck on more than one occasion. Adrian had hit the jackpot, again and again and again.

His first great breakthrough came when, through the intervention of a mentor, he acquired a small condo in Hawaii. Purchased at auction, it had been the property of a rather unusual character employed as a deckhand in the merchant marine. Being at sea for months at a time, none of his neighbors paid close attention to his comings and goings. This resulted in a rather long decomposition period when he died unexpectedly from a heart attack in his own living room. After a dozen days the smell began to creep into other connected apartments and finally complaints led to an investigation and the finding of a wholly ripe corpse. The stench had permeated everything within the space and finding another interested buyer became impossible.

When, some months later the bank foreclosed, the unit was left unkempt and unattended. A minor water leak sprung out in the refrigerator's automatic icemaker, now without power, thus leading to a saturated carpet, mold everywhere and an additional blend to the aroma that turned away every would-be buyer the bank could find. Disaster would be the proper word. When this real estate fiasco finally came to auction Knox was able to purchase it with ten percent down on a one hundred and ten thousand dollar bid. Two years later he would sell the property for over four hundred thousand and the aggregation of wealth began like a forest fire in a dry valley.

When Johnson & Johnson suffered the devastating Tylenol poisonings in September of nineteen eighty-two Adrian immediately recognized a bonanza in the market. The company was strong and honorable (in fact they created guidelines for packaging and recall now used throughout industry) and Knox knew their stock's disastrous plunge would soon make a comeback, and perhaps even grow the brand. To his surprise it took over a year to fully recover but his fifty thousand dollar investment at the bottom returned one million one hundred thousand just thirteen months later... the first of his 'savant-like' market investments.

There were others to be sure, but the next killing he made on the market was in tech stocks. Apple, to be specific. He bought into the company at a bit over three dollars a share in late two thousand three. Not needing liquid cash Adrian sat on the purchase for over ten years until he decided to sell in two thousand fifteen at one hundred thirty-eight. His original two hundred and fifty thousand investment yielding over eleven million dollars. Such market moves seemed easy to him, but he was always careful to make purchases and sales in small quantities to avoid being noticed. His judgment was considered good but never great, and he liked it that way. No one asked questions and he never had to fight off interviews about being so right.

The last point of wisdom I will illuminate here was the purchase of over three million shares of Ford stock at its bottom in the spring of two thousand nine. The stock price had fallen to one dollar and nine cents and looked to be another windfall. Ford was following every other stock on Wall Street as the market lost most of its value in a season of slaughter. By late two thousand eleven Adrian cashed in with the shares going for over eighteen dollars per. With this and many other great calls he had made, his fortune now stood at well over four hundred million dollars and his desire to remain an unknown was in jeopardy.

A final point. Adrian Knox was only one of many names used by our hero as he navigated the mysteries of finance and investment. Oh, yes... there is much to learn about the Ghost of Wall Street.

CHAPTER THREE

And Who Might Torment Our Hero?

Louis Stein was a correspondent of particular qualities, none of which anyone other than another malevolent soul might admire. His career had been built on and devoted to the destruction of others, particularly those of wealth and power. It was rumored that he had been offered bribes in his time to spike a story, but none ever stopped his reporting. That sounds noble, but in truth it simply devastated lives and afforded pain to people who may or may not have deserved it. Colleagues noted his maniacal glee when typing an exposé on some petrified banker or movie star, and God help the pastor or priest caught in something other than an honorable situation. If you had money or fame, Louis was on your case. Louis now had one target in particular that truly bothered him. He could find no details on this man's life, good or bad; and yet there were rumors that the man had accumulated a vast sum of money and left Wall Street without the glimmer of a biography. This was something Louis could not tolerate. There would be atonement.

Stein's office resides in the Times Building, eleventh floor, northwest corner, and that in itself speaks volumes about the revenue gathered for the Grand Old Lady by such a merchant of destruction. Office is perhaps two generous a term as the room was barely ten feet square. The condition moreover reflected the creature that occupied it. A tiny desk stood in one corner facing away from filthy windows, atop which were stacked files of brown and gray, loose pages scattered about and all corralling the instrument of ruination, a Royal mechanical typewriter that had to have been manufactured in the late fifties. Research, my dear, everything comes down to research.

Stein himself was no more presentable than his blighted office. A shabby man of medium height and more than medium weight, he often dressed in second hand clothes and worn shoes, perhaps seeking to blend in with the street people he sometimes used as sources. Often needing a shave, and always needing a haircut his greasy appearance had everyone on the eleventh floor looking to steer clear of contact in almost every way. The 'Hollywood Hammer' as he was known in theater circles was feared by many, had few friends, but attracted thousands of readers. Bringing down those at the top seemed to lure everyone's interest, especially if you could do it with some trashy tale of secret sex, or worse. Today, 'The Hammer' was on a new trail and seeking information about some Wall Street guy named Knox.

The newspaper archives Stein was looking over yielded nothing on Adrian Knox and Louis was beginning to feel the blood rise in his veins. Somebody who had a rumored fortune exceeding three hundred million had to have some clips somewhere, no? The more he looked the more he knew he was on to something, if for no other reason than the lack of evidence. Try to make sense out of that reasoning and you just might be another Louis Stein, but the street buzzed with stories of the guy who got away... and took quite a bit with him. This guy had to be dirty and Stein needed to find out all there was to the story.

Shoving the file box back onto its shelf he sat down at the examination desk and stroked his scruffy beard. He began to consider what a few of his street contacts on the financial block might be able to tell him. A foray into the lower pit of